1. Field
The present disclosure relates generally to protection circuits or devices for electrical equipment and improvements thereof. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to electromagnetic or high altitude electromagnetic pulse protection circuits or devices for electrical systems or equipment and improvements thereof.
2. Description of the Related Art
Communications equipment, computer systems and a variety of other electronic devices are vulnerable to damage or operational interference from electromagnetic pulses (“EMP”) or high altitude electromagnetic pulses (“HEMP”). These vulnerabilities can threaten proper operation for a wide variety of both military and commercial applications. Electronic devices impacted by such electrical pulses can be expensive to repair or replace and, therefore, a cost effective way to protect these devices and components is needed. One such effort for reducing or eliminating these problems involves connection of an EMP/HEMP protection device to the equipment, systems or other devices sought to be protected. By filtering or otherwise manipulating one or more electrical signals that propagate to the protected equipment, systems or devices via the EMP/HEMP protection device, the harmful electrical pulses may be diminished before they have an opportunity to interfere with system operations.
Unfortunately, conventional EMP/HEMP protection designs suffer from a variety of undesirable problems. Traditional design and manufacturing methods for EMP/HEMP protection devices involves the use of a feed-through capacitor or other circuit components assembled onto printed circuit boards (“PCBs”) via conductive pins that extend into and are received via receptacles on the PCBs. Due to this manufacturing design, electrical connections between the PCBs and the capacitive or other circuit components needed for pulse protection results in increased failure rates at these unstable connection points. These problems are often exacerbated by blind mating during the manufacturing process where the mating of components with the PCBs cannot be seen or felt prior or during securement in order to ensure correct alignment of the various parts. Use of pin and receptacle coupling methods, particularly as electrical parts are further reduced in size and sturdiness, results in increased susceptibility for failure at these connection points due to shock and/or vibration. This is of particular concern in military-grade applications which are commonly required to withstand harsher environmental conditions than their consumer-grade counterparts. Furthermore, feed-through capacitance construction additionally limits the available space of the protection device for housing or accommodating other protection circuitry components.
Therefore, an EMP/HEMP protection device or apparatus that is easier to manufacture and utilizes fewer or more stable connections is desired for increasing the mean time between failures (“MTBF”) of the device or apparatus. An ideal EMP/HEMP protection device would have increased reliability due to improved manufacturability or assembly design and encounter lower manufacturing costs, both in initial construction and in repair or replacement as a result of lessened return merchandise authorization (“RMA”) requests. The ideal EMP/HEMP protection device or apparatus would be capable of electrically isolating electromagnetic interference (“EMI”) from signals input or transmitted to the device.